


Three AM or Open And Vulnerable

by sallyamongpoison



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale finally responds in Crowley's Love Language, Idiots in Love, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), M/M, Pining, Romantic Fluff, Romantic Gestures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-06-24 02:04:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19714066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sallyamongpoison/pseuds/sallyamongpoison
Summary: In which, six months after the failed Armageddon, Aziraphale finally takes Crowley up on his offer to find a place just for them.





	Three AM or Open And Vulnerable

The night was, on the whole, rather ordinary. It had been raining since well before sundown. It was the kind of rain that came with no lightning or thunder, but instead was just the gentle patter of drops against the windows that seemed to never have an end. That was London for you, though. On the one hand it should have been relaxing, but in the incessant tapping somehow wormed its way into Aziraphale’s ears and every so often he would look up toward the door thinking that someone was trying to get his attention. He couldn’t settle, not really, and he shifted in the armchair he’d taken up in for the night as yet again his gaze moved from the pages of the book he read toward the door. 

It was stupid to think someone, or anyone, was out there. Of course there  _ were _ people out there, since it was London and at any given time there were people in the street. No one was looking for him, though. It was paranoia and he knew it. Since...well, since all that unpleasantness with both Heaven and Hell in the aftermath of a failed Apocalypse he’d had more of a tendency to look over his shoulder. Or, in this case, across the room. No one was there. Aziraphale knew no one was there. Yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that he needed to get up and do something.

He sighed. There wasn’t anyone around to hear it. It was an aggravated noise born of wanting to finish his book, but some existential angst wasn’t going to let him. The rain tapping on the glass didn’t help that, and for just a moment he considered what might happen if the rain just suddenly stopped in Soho. That wouldn’t be fair, though. The last thing he needed was for anyone to get curious, too, so he would have to deal with it. So he turned back to his book, eyes squinted behind his glasses, and made sure to read every single syllable with the same intention of a student trying to study for finals that had never been to a single class. That level of focus. That level of determination. He would read every last word and he would enjoy it.

Until he was more focused on being focused and then realized he actually hadn’t taken in anything of the last six paragraphs he’d read.

Again Aziraphale sighed. This time he gently tossed the book on the table beside him. It was fruitless. Pointless. How was he supposed to read when the rain was just out there making noise like that? How was he supposed to read when the world outside had no idea what kind of madness they’d sidestepped? How was he supposed to sit there, in his shop, and read a book when every time his mind wandered he heard Crowley say “we can go off together”?

He’d been resolutely Not Thinking About It for the last six months. 

The first time it had thrown him. Aziraphale hadn’t quite been able to control his face or the way something in his chest clenched. Something like that should never have come out of the demon’s mouth, and he was sure they both knew it. At the time there had been more pressing matters so he’d pushed it down and worried more about the fate of the world instead of the fate of his...friendship with Crowley. It had worked out in the end. It always did. But now that there had been time to contemplate it, to contemplate what it might have been like to just go out into the universe and find a place that could have just been theirs, he heard that phrase what felt like a hundred times a day. Maybe more. Every single time, just like the first time, it threw him. It threw him and it made something in his chest clench.

He was on his feet before he realized that he’d moved. One hand hand pulled his glasses off and set them neatly on the arm of the chair he’d just abandoned. This feeling of restlessness was new, one he didn’t like, and Aziraphale looked around the bookshop in the hopes that some sort of inspiration of what to do to quell it might hit him. It didn’t. Instead, his gaze landed on the door again. The rain was still pattering on the glass, and he took a sharp inhale before he adjusted his tie and walked forward.

It was cold outside. Logically he knew that. The weather didn’t affect him like it did humans, but he was aware of the fact that the late autumn night mixed with the rain should have been uncomfortable. In moments like this he actually envied humans because they could feel these things so acutely. How romantic would it have been to start walking out in the cold and rain, to feel the wind and water, and let it seep deeply into his bones as he made his way down the sidewalk? Arguably, he knew he probably looked insane. To any human out at that hour, not that Aziraphale knew the hour, a man out in such weather with no real coat or umbrella was mad. Maybe he was mad. He certainly felt a little mad inasmuch as he could feel that kind of thing.

Maybe he should have miracled the rain away. Maybe he should have kept himself dry as he quickly weaved through the night until a cab stopped and let him. That was the only miracle he could count on for the moment, and Aziraphale wasn’t even sure if it was one he’d done. His mind wasn’t on that. No, as he sat in the back seat with water dripping from his hair and down the back of his neck, the only thought thing that filled his mind was the image of Crowley standing before him with his arms held wide and open. Vulnerable. Crowley was never vulnerable, but in that moment he’d been as earnest as any human or angel Aziraphale had ever seen since he’d been created.

_ “It’s a big universe.” _

But was it? Really was it? God, in all their mercy and might, knew every inch of existence. Or, at least, he’d always assumed that God knew every inch of existence. They’d created it, after all, with a bit of help. And in all that wide and long expanse of everything and nothing Crowley had been so convinced that there was a place out there that could have been just for them. Was there? Was there a place out there that they could have run to where neither demon nor angel could have found them and brought them kicking and screaming back to fight in a war that neither of them believed in? Aziraphale couldn’t believe it. Even now, as some Top 40 song played in the background of his thoughts while the streets of London whizzed past his periphery, he wasn’t so sure. And yet...they’d somehow created a little universe all their own. 

It reminded him a bit of the Boy. Adam, who had only ever wanted his little piece of the world, had created his own perfect universe right there in Tadfield. Aziraphale and Crowley had done the same in London somehow. Anyone could have found them there, surely, but it was still theirs. God had never intervened, had never taken the time to smite them for their Arrangement or their friendship, so he had to wonder if it actually mattered at all. That was a thought that actually made him feel cold. Except no, it really didn’t. It made him feel cold and hot all at the same time.

The cab didn’t drop him off right outside the building that Crowley’s flat was in. He had a little way left to walk in the wind and rain, but Aziraphale didn’t mind. The driver had been given a generous tip, and Aziraphale had only smiled when he was asked if he was okay to walk. Of course he was okay. There was no danger of a cold from walking in the rain, not for him, and as he was soaked anew he found that it gave a bit of weight to internal struggle. His thoughts still whirled inside his head, still gave him flashes of Crowley standing before him and asking him to run away. 

Asked. Or...offered. It wasn’t a temptation. They’d never really talked about that. In six thousand years Crowley had never once tried to tempt him to do anything he didn’t want to do. If anything, the word was a bit of a joke. He only ever asked, occasionally badgered, and sometimes whined. In that moment, though, standing there at the bandstand, Aziraphale had to wonder if Crowley had begged. It hadn’t come off that way, and he’d never known Crowley to do anything like that in the past, but standing there and looking so earnest had been the closest thing Aziraphale had ever seen to him actually begging. And it hadn’t been some baseless thing. Not some lie or trick. It had been him trying to find a way for them to keep their friendship in the face of what could have been the end of everything.

When he got to the door Aziraphale was faced with the last obstacle that stood in the way of him seeing Crowley. It felt oddly final. The door, dark wood that had been stained darker so that it was almost black, gleamed in the fluorescent light that buzzed overhead. He lifted a hand, made a fist, and knocked three times. He waited a moment, brow furrowed, and knocked again. And again. Then he tried the bell. Then he knocked again. Why wasn’t Crowley answering? Was he home? He hadn’t thought to check if the Bentley was parked around the corner. The hand that was knocking started again and didn’t stop as his other hand went to press at the bell for a long moment. Surely Crowley would answer. Why wouldn’t he?

Aziraphale was well into the third minute of knocking and ringing the bell when the door finally opened. It was a quick motion that made him stumble forward, and it was only then that he realized that he’d been leaning so heavily against the heavy wood. Blue eyes blinked as he took in the sight of a very disgruntled looking Crowley that had ripped open the door and was standing before him in...well, Aziraphale had just assumed he’d be in his normal black suit. He wasn’t. Instead he was standing there, breathing hard, dressed only in a black robe that had been loosely tied around his waist. His hair stuck up at an even more odd than usual angle, and his dark glasses were askew on his nose.

“What the Hell-” he demanded as soon as the door was open, and he cut himself off nearly immediately, “Aziraphale?”

“I...yes, hello.”

There was a beat of silence, and in that beat Aziraphale could count how many times his heart pounded. There was a thrumming in his ears to see Crowley in such a state, and he blinked again as he took it in. What had he interrupted? Did he want to know?

“It’s three in the morning.”

“Is it?” Aziraphale asked, and looked around a bit before he went for his pocket watch. “So it is. Three...in the morning.”

Crowley’s mouth was hanging open just a little. Behind those glasses Aziraphale knew Crowley was studying him. He couldn’t see the demon’s eyes, but he could only imagine that they were searching every inch of the space he took up on his doorstep.

“Why are you soaking wet?”

“It is raining, or hadn’t you noticed?”

Again, with the dark glasses Aziraphale couldn’t see Crowley’s eyes. He did, however, get the distinct feeling of him looking over his shoulder to the rain still coming down on the street behind him. “So...you walked here. In the rain. At three in the morning?” Crowley asked finally.

“I took a cab, actually. After I walked for a bit, and then I walked a bit more before I got here.”

“Right. Of course you did,” Crowley answered, then took a step back away from the door so he could open in a bit more, “come in. Just mind the floors. You’re  _ dripping _ .”

“Am I?” Aziraphale asked as he stepped across the threshold. He was. He hadn’t thought about that. Ah well. He had a feeling that no harm would come to the cold marble courtesy of some demonic intervention. The only thing Aziraphale would have to worry about was not slipping as he adjusted his wet while Crowley closed the door behind him.

Door closed, Crowley paused after he locked it again. “You’re not...there’s not someone after you, is there?” he asked softly, “is that why you’re here at this ungodly hour?”

He scrunched up his nose for that and shook his head, “why would you think there was someone after me?”

“Oh, I don’t know, showing up and banging on the door like the hordes of Hell were after you?” Crowley deadpanned, “or Heaven, I suppose? Gabriel popped in to make some awkward threats?”

“No.”

He nodded. Then shook his head. Then shrugged. 

“Do you actually wear those at home?” Aziraphale asked, then gestured up to his eyes, “when no one else is around?”

“What?” Crowley asked in return. His own hand lifted to touch the earpiece of his glasses, then he sighed. “No. I had no idea who was going to be on the other side of  _ that, _ ” and he gestured to the door, “when I opened it. Didn’t want to scare the locals.”

Then Crowley started to walk. Aziraphale followed as they made their way down a long hallway, then a sharp turn right. As they walked, Crowley waved a hand and lights started to turn on until they stood in the doorway of his kitchen. From the brief time he’d stayed there while they’d swapped faced he knew that every single cupboard would be bare. Crowley didn’t share Aziraphale’s love of food, though he did take pride in having the most up to date appliances installed. It was why he wasn’t sure why Crowley had led them there. He expected them to end up in his rather austere sitting room, but the fact that they didn’t was a nice surprise.

“This is where I’m supposed to offer you something to drink, isn’t it?” Crowley asked as he made his way over to one of the cupboards, “coffee?”

“Ah, hot cocoa. If you have it,” Aziraphale answered, “though...you don’t have much of anything if my memory serves.”

That earned him a soft chuckle and Crowley shrugged just one shoulder, “I think I might have just the one thing.” He opened one of the cupboard doors, and Aziraphale had to chuckle himself when it revealed two steaming mugs inside. Crowley had a sense of imagination when it served him, but not much in the way of knowledge when it came to the ins and outs of cooking. Aziraphale had expected to see exactly one pot, some milk, and chocolate to make the aforementioned hot cocoa, but instead it seemed that Crowley had skipped all that just to materialize the product instead. And he had to laugh because one mug was Crowley’s trademark black and the other was a perfect recreation of Aziraphale’s white one with the angel wing handle.

Crowley pulled them down and offered the white mug to him, which Aziraphale took with a nod of thanks. “And here I thought you’d be trying to work the stovetop,” he teased.

“Not at three in the morning, no,” Crowley answered as he wound his hands around the other mug. Again there was that beat of silence as they stood there together, and Crowley licked his lips as it stretched out between them. “Why are you here?”

“I…” Aziraphale started, “didn’t interrupt anything, did I?”

“Other than me sleeping, no. But since when do you show up at my flat at three in the morning for hot cocoa?”

“Well, I was-” he started, then paused, “sleeping? Really, Crowley?”

“What else am I meant to be doing at three in the morning?”

“Since when do you sleep?”

“Since the fourteenth century,” he answered, “it was the only thing that made the time go by quicker, and it just sort of became a habit.”

“And you were sleeping like that,” Aziraphale said, and gestured back up to his eyes again.

Though he couldn’t see it, he knew that Crowley was rolling his eyes. The way his head cocked to the side just a bit and he did that petulant little lean that he always did when he was annoyed was a dead giveaway. “I told you I didn’t know who to expect when some madman was ringing my doorbell like it was Armageddon all over again,” he said, then pressed his lips together into a thin line for a moment, “it’s not, is it? Please tell me it’s not.”

“Not that I know of, no.”

Again, Crowley sighed, “So you’re here because, what, you just really wanted to walk in the rain and wake me up?”

This was it. Now was the time. Now was the time for him to say everything he’d wanted to say from that moment at the bandstand up until he’d knocked on Crowley’s door. He wanted to say that he regretted saying yes, that he wondered if it really would have been possible for them to find somewhere to go, and that he wanted to know why Crowley was willing to abandon everything to go off with him. That was why he’d even gotten up from his chair in the first place. Six months of wondering on top of six thousand years of friendship had been weighing him down in a way that Aziraphale didn’t quite know how to handle.

“Where would we have gone?” he asked, “if I’d said yes and we ran away from the end of the world?” At that point he was acutely aware of the fact that he was soaking wet and standing in Crowley’s kitchen. He was an angel standing in front of a demon, a corporeal body standing in front of another one, and he was wet and cold and scared of what the answer might have been. Not because he thought Crowley would retroactively rescind the offer, but because he was scared he wouldn’t. 

Crowley’s mouth fell open and a few sounds bubbled up from his throat. It was the same kind of noise he made when his brain was trying to catch up to his mouth and he didn’t know what to say. For a demon who was the incarnation of smooth, it happened more often than Crowley liked to believe. Aziraphale had seen it enough times to know, and it felt like he was standing at the bandstand all over again. Crowley hadn’t practiced this. He hadn’t planned it. He hadn’t spent however long wondering if it would ever come up again, and it made something in Aziraphale’s chest clench.

“I...we...it’s a big universe, Aziraphale.”

“So you said.”

“Some...galaxy far, far away?” Crowley offered, “maybe where the skies are purple and orange and the sunsets are beautiful?”

“Wouldn’t have been much in the way of good restaurants, I would imagine,” he pointed out.

“Or nightlife, no,” Crowley agreed. He set the mug down on the dark granite countertop, and fiddled a bit with the sash of his robe.

“But we would have gone?” Aziraphale asked, “just...you and me?”

Crowley nodded slowly, “we would have. Could have. If you’d wanted.”

It was Aziraphale’s turn to nod, and he put the mug of cocoa to his lips to take a sip. It wasn’t as good as if he’d made it himself, if only for the fact that he knew he hadn’t. Everything else about it was a perfect recreation, but in the back of his mind he knew that was all it was. And that...well, it gave him something to consider.

“We could have made it whatever we wanted,” he said, “restaurants, nightlife-”

“Old bookshops.”

“Velvet Underground.”

“You still wouldn’t like it.”

Aziraphale took a breath and set his mug down on the countertop as well. He locked his gaze with Crowley’s glasses, and even though he couldn’t see the demon’s eyes he knew that they were studying each other. “What would you have made it?” he asked, “the whole of the universe at your disposal and you would make this little section just for...just for us. What would it be, Crowley?”

“I wouldn’t have just been me making it,” Crowley told him, “it would have taken some serious miracles to make a whole other Soho on a distant planet.”

“Soho, then? Not...here? You’ve had this flat for years-”

“The plants. Would’ve asked you to miracle in some ferns. Maybe an ivy? I hear succulents are all the rage these days.”

“But nothing else? Just...Soho?”

He had taken a step closer then, and both of them had a hand resting beside their respective mugs. Aziraphale was close enough now that if he focused hard enough he could feel the heat coming off of Cowley’s skin. Maybe he was projecting, or imagining, but standing like that always gave him a bit of heat and what sometimes felt like an electric current around them both. Crowley, though respectful for the most part, had never cared that much about personal space. When they walked together, sat together, talked together, he so often was in Aziraphale’s space that it felt strange for him not to be. He sprawled himself out like no human ever did. It was as if his space took up more than his physical form, and Aziraphale could feel it brushing up against him. 

“I wasn’t going to rob you of your creature comforts,” Crowley said, “I know you like your...bookshop. Your restaurants. Your hot cocoa with too much milk in it. And your glasses that you don’t even need.”

“Says the one wearing them, at night, in his own flat.”

“But nothing else for you? Just some plants and...and…”

“You.”

That word was a breath. Once upon a time Crowley, then Crawly, had a bit of a hiss to the tone of his voice. He’d lost it over the millennia, but sometimes when he spoke quietly Aziraphale could almost hear it. It wasn’t like some melodramatic kind of thing, over-pronounced ‘s’ sounds to the end of words, but instead it was like a low rumble. Something from deep within Crowley’s chest. It didn’t happen often, but when it did Aziraphale felt it down to the core of his being. It shook him. And as Crowley said that word, that one word, his hand inched forward and just the very tips of their fingers brushed.

In just over six thousand years Aziraphale could count how many times Crowley had actually touched him. Once upon a time he’d thought that maybe it was a fear that, like Holy Water, a touch from an angel might destroy him completely. Once upon a time he’d worried the same thing. But then, like the way that Crowley was at respectful of Aziraphale’s boundaries, he’d only ever done it on a rare occasion. Sometimes it was playful, sometimes not, but every time their skin had touched it always meant something. It often left the place where they’d made contact tingle for days on end and Aziraphale could hardly think of anything else. Six months ago Crowley had backed him up against a wall in a building that had once been a Satanic nunnery, and it was only the threat of Armageddon that had kept him from having a complex about it. 

The way that just the tips of Crowley’s fingers brushed his own made every other instance before now almost melt away. This was deliberate in a way that nothing else before had been. This was, in effect, the same as Crowley standing before him with his arms spread open wide and being so genuine and vulnerable that it made Aziraphale’s chest ache. It ached because he’d seen it before and had never done anything about it. It ached because this was six thousand years, and he was finally acting on it. It ached because Crowley, the seemingly self-serving but damnably selfless creature that he was, would have carved out a place in that stars for  _ him _ . Aziraphale was the one who wanted the human comforts, but all Crowley had wanted was for him to be happy.

All Crowley wanted was Aziraphale.

“I don’t think we would have to go that far now,” Aziraphale said finally. His eyes slid closed for a moment and his hand moved to cover Crowley’s. If a demon could be open and vulnerable then so could an angel. Six thousand years of being on his guard, of waiting for the other shoe to drop, and in the end it had been one deemed an Adversary that had been the one to do the most right by him. Neither Heaven nor Hell could boast that for either of them. Crowley had, so many times before, done right by Aziraphale. Less so in words, but always in actions. He’d never hesitated, other than that time after the Bentley had exploded, to do the Right Thing. Now Aziraphale wanted to do the same.

“No nipping off to another galaxy?” Crowley asked.

“We have a perfectly good Soho and London flat with houseplants right here,” he answered, then opened his eyes, “but...I want to show you something. Make up for the fact that I apparently woke you up.”

Crowley didn’t say anything to that. Aziraphale would have expected some sort of quip, but instead they walked in silence toward Crowley’s sitting room. They walked, short distance though it was, this time with their fingers linked. Aziraphale felt that same heat and electric current all the way up his arm and into his chest. Whether that had something to do with the fact that they were and angel and a demon touching for a prolonged period of time or if it was just the fact that it was  _ them _ was beyond him at the moment. It was nearing three-thirty in the morning, and Aziraphale wanted to let himself be open and vulnerable.

Once in the sitting room, Aziraphale turned back to Crowley. They stood, nearly chest to chest, he smiled at the sight of Crowley standing there with the dark glasses no longer covering his eyes. They’d gone somewhere between the kitchen and the sitting room, and now Crowley looked at him with nothing to hide behind. Aziraphale, too, didn’t look away. Before, whenever they were being a bit more open and honest, he’d had trouble meeting Crowley’s gaze. It was as if looking into Crowley’s eyes would make things more real. More... _ more. _ He couldn’t lie to him when he looked into Crowley’s eyes. He couldn’t make excuses. He couldn’t lie to himself. And if Crowley wasn’t going to hide, then neither was Aziraphale. 

For the first time it wasn’t one of them being open to the other without reciprocation. They were on equal footing. They were an angel without Heaven and a demon without Hell. They were and angel with a demon. They were Crowley with Aziraphale. They were standing in Crowley’s sitting room at nearly three-thirty in the morning, holding hands, and looking into each other’s eyes like they were indeed in a whole other galaxy and there wasn’t a world outside to contend with. This was their galaxy far, far away and yet so very close. 

Around them the scenery changed. It was, at heart, still Crowley’s flat. Yet it wasn’t. It was Aziraphale’s bookshop. It was Crowley’s flat, Aziraphale’s bookshop, and miraculously it was a purple sky in the midst of a perfect sunset shining through the windows. It was a beautiful nebula and pinpricks of stars around them. It was a world wholly unlike earth with all its creatures, and yet so painfully human that there was no denying it was home. This was home. This was a mix of them, a mix of six thousand years of creation and an eternity more of just them. Somehow. Miraculously so. Perhaps even demonically so. And still, their eyes never left each other’s.

“Still everything you wanted?” Aziraphale asked softly.

Crowley smiled, it lit up his entire face as it always had, and the hand not wrapped up in Aziraphale’s moved to cup the angel’s cheek. He’d never touched him like that, not in six thousand years, and it was all Aziraphale could do to hope he never stopped. He didn’t close his eyes, though. He wanted to. He wanted to take in this moment, take in their own little world that was theirs and God’s and the humans’, but he couldn’t look away.

“And more, Angel,” Crowley said in that same low tone he’d used before.

They moved closer, and Aziraphale rested his forehead against Crowley’s. The hand at his cheek didn’t move, neither did their interlocked hands, and finally he let himself close his eyes. They stood there in that little world that was also Crowley’s flat and his bookshop and somewhere else entirely until the sunset ended and it was merely three-thirty in the morning again.

**Author's Note:**

> Whoa, hey everyone! It's been a hot minute. How are ya? Real Life has been nuts. I got a new job that's been a whirlwind, and finally managed to squirrel away some time to write. Fun fact, I used to write Good Omens fanfic back in high school so returning to it just feels a little like coming home all over again. 
> 
> You can always find me on Tumblr! @sallyamongpoison


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